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The Cheating Cheaters who Cheat

Dear Sean,
Well this is more of like a help thing. When i play 4-square and i am at the diagonal square to the king square, the king serve the ball not diagnol towards me. He serves more like diagonal near towards the queen's square and the ace square/toilet, but STILL in my square, can he even do that? and so if it hit the inside lines, it means you're out right? my other help is can that the other 3 members, i.e. king, queen, toilet, gang up on the square diagonal to the kings (my school calls it the Jack square). They like gang up and doing whatever they can to get you out. Another confused help is referring to the "gang to get you out" rule is that once they get you out, they will keep doing it until they get you out and bring a friend of theirs and play a friendly four square. The ganging team plays vicious to get you out and when their friend comes in, they play it nicely and friendly, not trying to get the person out. And if the ball is too low, you can get a redo right? Is this custom or not? -love, "a confused player" 12/1/2009

Whoa. I'll answer your questions in the order they were received.

That guy in four square is being a cheating loser. The person serving the ball should understand that his job is to put the ball into fair play, and any control over the first hit of the ball should be given fairly to the receiver. If he is hitting ball into your square in a crappy place, as if he wants to control the way you hit it back or prevent you from hitting it back, then you should institute a rule for where the serve must first touch. A "serve zone" would work, some smaller division of the receiver's square that is in an appropriate place, to force the server to hit it fairly into the square. The alternative is to quit playing with him because he cheats.

Those three guys kinda suck. There are no friends in four square. Not only are they colluding with each other in anticompetitive nature, they are also hurting themselves by not ganging up on the top player. It's kinda dumb, because the when they gang up on you in one square, the person who gains the most is the person in four square. Again, the alternative is to quit playing with those cheating cheaters.

The ball being too low? Well. That is another story. If we are talking about serves, then you can make up a rule that prevents server from serving low balls. If the ball is just too low during normal play and you couldn't return it then I think it means you are out.

But I'll stick with my original diagnosis and say again that those kids are cheating and it sounds like it kind of sucks to play games with them. I would say you can try to reorganize a few rules to deal with the bad behavior of a few people, or make it personal andannihilate them as soon as they get on the court with you.